Classical music has just planted its first footprint in the world’s
second most populous nation. India, which has never shown much interest
in sonata form and suchlike, now has a professional symphony orchestra
and this week named a Kazakh violinist as its music director.

Marat Bisengaliev, 42, is an enterprising soloist who started winning
competitions just as the Soviet Union was breaking up and seized his
chance in his country’s oil-rich independence. Settling in London in
1991, Bisengaliev formed a home-based Kazakh Chamber Orchestra and two
national symphony orchestras with which he has recorded, among other
esoterica, the recent snooze music of former ad composer Karl Jenkins.
Seven corporate megaliths jostle for sponsor credits at the foot of his
website.

India, though, is Bisengaliev’s boldest venture. The new Symphony
Orchestra of India is funded by the agrochemicals-to-telecomms Tata
Group, which has built a sumptuous National Centre for the Performing
Arts on the waterfront in Mumbai and needs a resident ensemble. The
Indian government, says Bisengaliev, ‘shows no interest at all. But
there is a middle class of 200 million people with a growing interest in
western lifestyles. This is an incredible opportunity for classical
music.’

Most of the new orchestra’s musicians are drawn from his Kazakh
ensembles - ‘only nine Indians passed the audition to a standard we
would recognise in London,’ – but Bisengaliev has established four
Kazakh players in fulltime teaching posts and expects the orchestra to
be fully indigenous before long.

Next September he is planning what may be the Indian premiere of
Beethoven’s ninth symphony, while tempting sub-continent opera lovers
with a fully-staged Pagliacci. If he manages to build a loyal following,
the opportunities for record companies and visiting orchestras would
appear to be limitless.

The only blip on this new beginning is the absence from the letterhead
of Mumbai’s most famous musical son, Zubin Mehta, 70, a personal friend
of the sponsoring group’s chairman, Ratan Tata. ‘It should have been
Zubin who founded this orchestra, not me,’ admits Bisengaliev, ‘but he’s
always too busy.’

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